8.22.2006

Next month I have a solo show at GRACE in Reston Va (outside Washington DC). Originally the other artist having a solo there, Adam Grossi, and I were going to do all kinds of collaborative projects - our interests and aesthetics are similar, and having a show of two guys who draw and paint the suburbs at a venue deep in the suburbs was too sweet an irony to pass up.

As it happened, and as I've come to learn over the last 14 months, things don't happen with the same freedom and speed as they used to. I've had to adjust and re-adjust and then re-adjust again until now I'm in a mad dash to finish the work I want to have in the show. Adam and I have shelved our more ambitious collaborative ideas until a later show - now we're each doing our own thing.

For my part, the show will be 3 bodies of work - drawing/collages, paper sculptures and a website viewable both in the gallery and remotely. I'll write more about each of these, and other things about this berserk careen towards Sept. 29, as the show get closer.

8.18.2006

Monday I'll start a series of updates on my GRACE show that opens next month, but here's what else has been going on:

POST-ITThe U.K.'s art powerhouse Craig Atkinson put together a show at the Atkinson Gallery in Southport England. Lost of artists form all over, with a great blog documenting all the entries. The deal is that all the works are based on a title of a work in the Atkinson Galleries collection. The image above is my version of "Owl". I did two others, more collagey-weird, I'll look for the scans...

THE FEASTI have a 3-page story in the Canadian art-book THE FEAST. There was a show last month but I got my work there too late. You can get the book (chock full of great art) here for 15$ Canadian.

BARRELHOUSEI have a 20-page story in the next issue of Barrelhouse, a literary magazine out of Baltimore. You can read the story I drew, which is written by Erin Pringle, here. I'll post more when it's published - the above image is page 12.

8.17.2006

I've been busily preparing for my upcoming show at GRACE in Reston Va next month, but before I give an update on that and what else I've been up to I want to get something down. Hopefully there's a couple blog-readers left after my 35-day comics marathon.

One reason I did that, and plan to do a couple more series like it, was some thinking brought on by discussions of the "cult of youth" at Ed Winkleman's blog among other places. Reading that blog and PaintersNYC one get the idea that if you're not snapped up by a major gallery by the time you're out of grad school you're washed up career-wise.

I don't buy this of course - I can't because I'm 36! It's dumb because ones art-making carrer and ones art-world career are linked, but separate. The studio work takes hard looking and thinking and pulling out of hair to get to moments of triumph that noone sees but me. The art-world success takes work too, but luck is a big part of it.

I started thinking of what advantages the non-baby artist had over the young folks, and one thing is experience. And in art, experience means a trail of work behind you. So I figured I'd feature some work from the past that either never got published or shown, or only a few people saw - I started with the Charles Schulz Peanuts tribute (originally published in Top Shelf), then the " " story I finished posting yesterday.